Learning from sewers - informational content of wastewater, methodological challenges and solutions
Event details
| Date | 28.05.2013 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:15 |
| Speaker | Dr Christoph Ort, Urban Water Management, EAWAG, CH |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Sewers are an excellent example for NID. Increasingly, wastewater is not only seen as a sink for pollutants but it is a vital resource in water reuse schemes and it contains a wealth of information. Scientists from various disciplines take samples from sewers to quantify pollutant concentrations in wastewater and calculate full scale mass fluxes for different source typing and tracking purposes (e.g. quantification of hospital wastewater).
At the influent of a sewage treatment plant, wastewater often appears to be a more or less homogeneous, continuous, grey-brownish stream. Most of the emerging contaminants of interest (i.e. micro- and nano-pollutants) cannot be measured online, particularly not in a dirty and hazardous environment such as sewers are. Therefore, it is a tedious task to demonstrate that concentrations of emerging contaminants can be subject to high dynamics and that predicting the expected variability of a particular substance at a particular place in a sewer system is a challenge. However, it is imperative to know or characterize the variability of the substance under investigation, as this is a prerequisite to collect representative samples.
A lot of effort is put into improving the sensitivity and selectivity of analytical methods to quantify lower and lower concentrations of chemicals. The fact that sampling is the first step of analytical chemistry is often overlooked. If a sample is not fit for purpose, chemical and statistical analyses cannot make up for deficiencies in sampling, no matter how sophisticated they are.
Unique insights into the dynamics of pollutants in a selection of sewer systems around the globe will be presented during the talk. Additionally, a sampling proficiency test, methods to predict patterns of pollutants and solutions to setup robust sampling schemes will be elaborated on. The most prominent example is the estimation of illicit drug consumption through wastewater analysis. Only when environmental engineers, analytical chemists, forensic scientists and epidemiologists work together in transdisciplinary teams can this approach provide reliable information about this highly stigmatized problem.
At the influent of a sewage treatment plant, wastewater often appears to be a more or less homogeneous, continuous, grey-brownish stream. Most of the emerging contaminants of interest (i.e. micro- and nano-pollutants) cannot be measured online, particularly not in a dirty and hazardous environment such as sewers are. Therefore, it is a tedious task to demonstrate that concentrations of emerging contaminants can be subject to high dynamics and that predicting the expected variability of a particular substance at a particular place in a sewer system is a challenge. However, it is imperative to know or characterize the variability of the substance under investigation, as this is a prerequisite to collect representative samples.
A lot of effort is put into improving the sensitivity and selectivity of analytical methods to quantify lower and lower concentrations of chemicals. The fact that sampling is the first step of analytical chemistry is often overlooked. If a sample is not fit for purpose, chemical and statistical analyses cannot make up for deficiencies in sampling, no matter how sophisticated they are.
Unique insights into the dynamics of pollutants in a selection of sewer systems around the globe will be presented during the talk. Additionally, a sampling proficiency test, methods to predict patterns of pollutants and solutions to setup robust sampling schemes will be elaborated on. The most prominent example is the estimation of illicit drug consumption through wastewater analysis. Only when environmental engineers, analytical chemists, forensic scientists and epidemiologists work together in transdisciplinary teams can this approach provide reliable information about this highly stigmatized problem.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- IIE
Contact
- Professor Urs Von Gunten, LTQE